Participants will learn how to start and continue developmentally appropriate conversations about adoption, first families and loss. Topics will include understanding how children experience adoption; why the words we use matter, strategies that match children’s developmental stages, why beginning with a child’s birth makes sense and how to talk about first/birth parents depending on the information available as well as how to answer and anticipate children’s questions whether they ask them or not. We will discuss how to coordinate these conversations when birth parents are available to be part of them and when they are not.